Black Box Thinking
Have you ever noticed that the best strategy when struggling to recall a word is to stop thinking about it and get on with something else? It feels so counterintuitive and yet it works. I also apply this strategy when designing a workshop to meet the specific needs of a group. I plan out what I think is the best approach then go away and do something else. Sure enough, within a few hours, my brain comes up with new ideas that improve the workshop.
Our brains seem to function best when given time and space to think. I know I have written about this before, but I get many of my good ideas during a ride, or you may know it as a spin class. It seems that when I am busy focusing on the physical exertion needed to keep up with the class, my brain takes the opportunity to make new connections and ideas. I cannot count how many blog posts, including this one, have their genesis in a ride class. But how my brain does this black box thinking is an utter mystery to me.?
What do I mean by black box thinking? Many different fields use the term ‘black box’ when describing a process that is hidden from the user or observer. For example, Google Maps is a black box to me as I have no idea how it knows that one route is two minutes faster than another. I’m okay with this because I don’t need to know how it works, just that it works. Whenever our brains make neural connections in a way that is hidden from us, this is black box thinking in action. Below are some examples of black boxes we regularly encounter.
This is the gut feeling that we all experience. I think of it as an unconscious summary of my experiences to date. It is our intuition that causes us to feel attracted to or be wary of someone we have just met. Intuition also tells us when something is just what we are looking for.?
We can't explain intuition. It is a black box that if ignored, can often lead to regret. While we have no idea why our intuition is telling us something, more often than not we should back ourselves enough to follow it. But this doesn’t mean that all our decisions should be made based on our gut. This is what keeps people gambling. What I am saying is that we should value intuition as an important contributor to any decision we make.
I’ve already touched on this, but often the best way to come up with a solution is to give your brain time to make connections between the things you know. It’s like we already have the answer, and it takes time to reveal itself. Once again, this is black box thinking in action. We don’t know how we came up with the solution, but once we do, we know it is the right one.
I remember one Christmas holiday, a solution to a complex situation I was grappling with, popped into my head. It was one of those ideas that once thought of made absolutely sense. I still don’t know how I came up with the idea which led to a successful outcome.
领英推荐
I’ve long been a fan of Eisenhower’s time management matrix, a version of which is reproduced below.
I’ve always coached leaders to work, whenever possible, in the top right-hand quadrant when you are doing important work, but at a time when it isn’t urgent. As I reflected on black box thinking I realised that being in this quadrant was not just useful as a way to avoid unnecessary stress, it also allows us to do our best work. Giving our black box thinking time to influence will always improve our work. I touched on this a little bit in last year’s blog post Using time to improve our thinking, but this was before I’d made the black box thinking connection.?
So far we have thought about black box thinking as it relates to the neural networks in our brains. But there is another type of black box thinking connected to neural networks. This one is driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI). As AI advances so does its black box thinking capability. For example, AIs trained to read medical imaging can now detect cancers long before humans can. This is great news for patients, but what is scary, is that no one knows exactly what the AI ‘sees’ that leads it to the accurate diagnosis. This is only one of many examples of the black box thinking that AIs are increasingly capable of doing. We can expect to see many incidences of this in the future. Sam Altman, the CEO behind ChatGPT is reported to have a sign above his desk that says:
No one knows what happens next.
The Age of AI
Now I am not for one minute trying to scare us, but whether we are aware of it or not, we are now living in the Age of AI. As leaders, it is really important to understand what is happening in this field and to adjust our practice accordingly.?
Over the next few weeks, I am going to unpack some of the key things that I believe are important for leaders to know about AI. This technology is going to change many things about the way we live, learn and work. Whether this is positive or negative depends on how we respond. The first step though is to keep increasing our knowledge about AI because we may end up relying on black box thinking in more ways than we expect.
My name is Carolyn. I set leaders, teams and organisations up for success by equipping them with powerful tools and strategies. Sign up for my weekly blog (https://eepurl.com/givMTn) or message me if you’d like to know more.